


never let you go

by NotAllThoseWhoWander



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Era, F/M, M/M, in fact quite soap-opera esque, lots of melodrama, musichetta is pregnant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 13:46:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotAllThoseWhoWander/pseuds/NotAllThoseWhoWander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Musichetta is pregnant. No one knows who the father is. Enjolras and Combeferre almost sleep together. Grantaire is lovesick. Joly cries during sex. Essentially a soap opera. (Pardon the awful title)</p>
            </blockquote>





	never let you go

  
"I have information of the upmost secrecy," Joly says when Combeferre opens the door. "Information that will undoubtedly alter the course of my own life, and likely several others."

Combeferre sniffs. It's seven o'clock in the morning. On a Saturday. Combeferre, although hardly one for late-night revelry, grants himself the small luxery of sleeping until seven forty-five on Saturdays (excepting occasions when his presence is required at church, the Musain or the Necker). Given the frenetic tempo and volume of the knocking on his door, he'd risen quickly and thrown on yesterday's shirt and pants; now, he becomes gradually aware that said shirt is inside-out and his pants are unbuttoned.

"What is it, Joly?"

Joly looks at him across the doorway. The youthful  _malade imaginaire_ appears stricken: pallid, brown hair in disarray, lower lip trembling in an uncharacteristic display of fright. Concern is a look well-aquainted with Joly's features, but fright—not so much. Combeferre watches Joly draw in a deep, steadying breath, and then—

"Musichetta is with child."

"Oh, my  _God_ ," Combeferre says. And then, stepping away from the door, "Come in." Because, having relayed his information, Joly looks to be on the brink of fainting; he wavers, catching himself on the doorjamb. 

"I am quite alright, just give me a moment..." Joly murmurs as Combeferre herds him into the small, bright apartment. There is a clutter of medical textbooks on the scarred wooden table, but these Combeferre clears away with a sweep of his arm, relocating them haphazardly to his unmade bed. Joly sinks into a chair and buries his head in his hands.

"I thought to approach you first, given your—given  _our_ —fields of expertise." 

"Ah, yes." Combeferre's fingers go to his shirt buttons, then hesitate. "Would you mind if I make myself decent, first?"

"Not at all," Joly says, with a sound that resembles a sob of desperation. He stares blankly at his hands while Combeferre appropriates a clean shirt and breeches, runs his fingers through his hair and brushes his teeth. When Combeferre has rejoined him at the table, he announces, with false gusto, "I must extend my hearty thanks to you, Combeferre, for not turning me away at your doorstep."

"I would never! Joly, we have never been strangers." Combeferre isn't sure whether to pat Joly's shoulder or embrace him. He settles for patting Joly's hand. "I am glad that you felt you could confide in me."

"That's just it." Joly looks up, perhaps seeking the guidance of a force Combeferre cannot see.  _The Virgin, perhaps?_ The thought twists a wry smile on Combeferre's lips, and he feels terrible. "A complication has arisen."

"With the pregnancy?" Combeferre says at once. Joly shakes his head mutely. 

"Combeferre," he says, softly, despairingly, "we haven't any idea who the father is."

___________

 

Combeferre isn't the sort of man to balk at stress, awkwardness or the possibility of an extremely emotional situation. He's spent a majority of his schooling studying to be a  _doctor_ , for Christ's sake! For some inexplicable reason, Combeferre seems to exude a certain aura that serves as an invitation for worried friends to come spill their problems upon him. Which he most certainly doesn't mind. At all. 

Until he has no earthly idea what to say, and one of his good friends is at the brink of either tears, vomiting or both in his bedroom.

"Historically, you are not the first—"

"Some reassurance  _that_ is!" Joly cries balefully. He drags his hand across his face and meets Combeferre's gaze. 

"If anything, it is a conundrum that you should face alongside many men—but how many of them can say that they adore the other possible father as much as the mother?"

"I'm going to be sick," Joly announces. "Even saying the words— _with child_ —nearly brought me to unconsciousness."

"Joly," Combeferre says, with as much authority as he can muster at seven-fifteen in the morning. "You are delivering the news, not the child."

At this well-intentioned jab, Joly lets out a sobbing laugh. He mops at his damp forehead, nods several times. 

"You are right, you are right. And now I feel a proper fool."

"Do not, please." Combeferre is unwilling to let silence swell up around them; having been studying at the Necker for some time, he is schooled in the art of avoiding awkward silence. "Joly, I must ask—and I profess to desiring some degree of delicacy, but we are good friends and both men, and..."

"Say what you will, then. We are both to be doctors, censorship is a folly between us."

"Right," Combeferre drums a little at the table. How is this so cut-and-dry with patients and so horribly uncomfortable with Joly? "Are you sure that there is no way of distinguishing who is the father of the child?"

"Ah," Joly says. "There is not. Not to any degree of certainty, no."

"How far along is she?"

"Some two months, I believe." Joly wrings his hands. "You know Musichetta—she's so slender, as soon as she began to—we could tell straight away, and she was feeling unwell—Bossuet only laughed and kissed her but I—there is no way to tell..."

"There may be, Joly." Combeferre is becoming increasingly unnerved. Joly, for all his imagined maladies, has continually been the more cheerful  _Ami_. Seeing him delivered pale and shaking to Combeferre's doorstep is most disconcerting. "I'm sure that in the past you three—ah,  _two_ , have practiced some form of protection against pregnancy?"

"Always!"

"Then you are well-aware of the falliable nature of incomplete coition?"

Joly nods silently. "If you think that I have not lectured both Lesgle and Musichetta time and again..."

"I believe you," Combeferre assures him. "I only wonder how you might be. Ah. Certain that your lover has been entirely faithful to you and Citizen Lesgles." Firstly, since when has Combeferre taken to calling his comrades 'citizen' in casual conversation? Secondly, Joly looks as if Combeferre had just reached across the table and slapped him in the face. "I had to ask!" Combeferre cries, "You have my apologies, but you must see my reasoning, Joly!"

"So I do," Joly murmurs. "So I do."

Now the silence comes, a stiff, lingering, awkward silence that Combeferre could not break if he tried. He realizes that he has offended Joly and Bossuet both, and Musichetta (a woman unsated by two lovers, turning to others in the streets?), and he feels guilt warm his cheeks. He catalogues Joly's potential reactions: perhaps rising to slap Combeferre and storm away (highly uncharacteristic), weep (more likely, infinitely more heartbreaking), sit in stunned silence for another hour (also likely). 

"You realize—" he begins, but Joly stands, scraping back the chair.

"I can only thank you for your time, Combeferre." Joly raises his chin, tilting his head back in an immeasurable expression of upmost pride. Combeferre rises and extends his right hand.

"My dear Joly, I know that you and—"

"We'll all struggle through together," Joly says, and suddenly his lip is quivering and before Combeferre is aware of what's happening Joly is in his arms, weeping quietly. "Just as we always seem to."

"You will," Combeferre says, and because he isn't sure what else to do he rubs Joly's arm. Soothing without being overly-friendly. Joly steps away and claps Combeferre's shoulders, and nods (twice, as if affirming something to himself) and then turns on his heel and leaves, shouting over his shoulder,

" _Tous mes remerciements, mon ami_!"

" _Je sais_!" Combeferre calls from the doorway, but Joly has already made his way down the stairwell and out into the bright clatter of the street. Combeferre turns around, eases the door shut and leans against it.

Only then does he breathe to himself: "what the everloving  _hell_?"

_____________

"I take the liberty of likening myself to Bacchus," Grantaire says, trailing a forefinger down the grisette's exposed collarbone. "Crowned in grapevines, those laurels of the hillside vineyard, waxing poetic to the sweet melody of Pan's lutes..."

"How clever you sound,  _monsieur_." She throws her head back in gay, unrestrained laughter, shifting deliciously on Grantaire's lap. Grantaire's gaze falls to her heaving bosom, pert with youth. "A real scholar, like they say." And,  _gods_ , she's passing her warm hand along the inside of his knee, traveling up to the juncture of his legs. "Keep talking,  _monsieur_. About your drunk gods."

The noise of the Corinthe swells up around them, laughter and the clank of full glasses, but Grantaire is deaf to all but her low, rough voice. Marie, he thinks—or Maria? Martinne? They all look the same to him, now: there is only one girl whom Grantaire seduces, one girl with a hundred faces and a hundred names, a slender wild girl with pale hair and blue eyes. A curved bow of a mouth, cheekbones high and sharp, a thin stature mistaken at first glance for boyish. A maternal bosom will never do. He prefers the slight roundness of tomboyish breasts that are easily hidden beneath the folds of an overcoat. He does not care if she is clever; his mind provides ample material and, more often than not, she will not speak when they are together, only moan, or whine, or sigh. 

"Untamed Bacchus, savage drunken Bacchus," and her hand trails up higher, and Grantaire buries his head in the crook of her neck, inhales a floral scent like sweet perfume. "Sewn into Zeus's skin, born from the flesh of his strong thigh—"

"How unpleasant." The grisette pulls a face, nudges him away. She perches unsteadily on the edge of his knee. "Do you think often of men's thighs,  _monsieur_?"

Her warm hand is gone from Grantaire's leg. 

"No,  _madamoiselle_ , I..." but it is too late, the grisette has slipped away with a smirk and jerk of her head, as if to say  _I won't bother_ , and Grantaire is left alone at his back table with only some cheap wine and his own rue. 

He doesn't see Feuilly coming, only the lilt of a little ditty about a milkmaid and a circus performer (one of Feuilly's self-professed favorites) and the sudden descent of a hand upon his shoulder.

"Run into misfortune again?"

"Something like that," Grantaire says gloomily, and drains his wine-cup. "I drink to forget, and to forget myself and flirt shamelessly, and to my chagrin all the vixens of Paris seem to conspire against me." 

"Against your prick, maybe," Feuilly says without malice, dropping into the unoccupied chair. "You haven't visited the Musain today, have you?"

"It is Saturday. Our fearless leader is doubtless occupied with elevating Lamarque to a seat beside Zeus's own. Or penning a speech that will." 

"A likely prospect," Feuilly agrees, although Grantaire knows that he does not mean to spite Enjolras, or even to speak ill against him. The naysayer's jagged throne has been claimed already by Grantaire. Then, jerking his head in the vague direction of Grantaire's lost cause: "What's her name?"

"I'm not sure." Grantaire admits, following Feuilly's gaze to the grisette, who has already slipped onto another man's lap. His broad hands are all over her: waist, small chest, shoulders. Grantaire scoffs and glances away. It occurs to him, distantly, that he is bothered by  _not_ knowing Enjolras's current whereabouts. By the thought that Enjolras could be in some dark, wine-stinking saloon, with a stranger's hands pouring over him like so much poison, devouring him...

"I must make my excuses," Grantaire says, rising and bowing with a flourish. Feuilly lifts his own cup in response, tilting his hand into a mock-salute. Grantaire leaves hastily, avoiding the grisette's gaze on his way out the door. He isn't sure why he bothers with the Corinthe, anyways: cheap wine, cheap women, a rough crowd. Alluring because most evenings Grantaire leaves with a grisette who he can fuck against an alley wall, or in his bed, or will suck him off as soon as they find a place enveloped in shadow, and most evenings he can let the cheap wine blur her face into a high-cheekboned, red-lipped, blond-haired pastiche of Enjolras, and if Grantaire moans another name when he comes no one is the wiser. 

The evening is warm, and Grantaire removes his coat, draping it over his arm as he walks. He is driven up the  _rue_ by a distinct and growing desire to become drunker. He's contemplating the merits of stopping by the Trayeuse (another favorite drinking-place, of iller repute than the Corinthe) for some dice games and perhaps another stab (quite literally) at a pale-haired and willing grisette, and indeed would have hung a right on the Rue Saint-Michel if someone had not caught at his arm. 

"Pardon,  _monsieur_ ," the urchin says, and dips into a stiff-limbed curtsey, but Grantaire isn't fooled.

"My wallet, if you will—" he lunges, the urchin sidesteps (a little boy resembling, Grantaire cannot help but notice, Courfeyrac's little  _ami_ Gavroche, doubtless of the same street-raised breed) and slips away, Grantaire stumbles, catching himself clumsily upon the pillar of a streetlamp. As he passes a hand over his eyes—disbelief, a shock akin to rage registering—someone appears on the pavement...light, and music...

"I do not believe this," Grantaire says.

"How drunk are you this evening?" Enjolras clasps his hands behind his back; the perfect model of a disapproving general surveying his troops.

"Your face has yet to blur into unrecognition," Grantaire replies, hoisting himself upright with only minimal effort. "And so, I should say: not nearly drunk enough."

"I apologize," Enjolras says swiftly, "that my face should offer your sobreity such insult."

Grantaire's cheeks flame with embarrassment; he masks it well, as always, with a broad smirk and tip of an invisible hat. Enjolras turns away, rolling his eyes.

"You stink of wine."

"And you of revolution. Tell me, how piously did you pray to Saint Lamarque this evening?" Grantaire falls easily into step beside Enjolras, following him in the vague direction of the Court of Miracles. Enjolras makes a low sound of bitter dissent. 

"I will not entertain you with my politics, Grantaire." 

"A pity," Grantaire says. "As I am always entertained by them."

They continue in silence. Grantaire wonders how he might impress Enjolras, or make mockery of him. Moreso, he wonders what it might feel like to divest Enjolras of his waistcoat and cravat, to feel Enjolras's warm skin beneath his hands. Bare shoulders, Enjolras's unclothed stomach, the skin just above his pubic bone, Grantaire was certain that there was a trail of light hair there, tracable down to...

"And here I am afraid that I must bid you goodnight," Enjolras says curtly.

"How can you stand to leave my company so soon?" Grantaire cries, sweeping into a melodramatic bow. He straightens and feels a jolt of abject humiliation as he traces Enjolras's critical gaze to the front of his breeches.

"Imagine that," Enjolras turns. "Perhaps you will find a grisette to satisfy your needs this evening, Citizen Grantaire."

Grantaire watches Enjolras drift up the pavement, a spectre in red, and then beats a cowed retreat in the direction of the Trayeuse, the front of his pants still embarrassingly tight.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure how much I like this chapter, but I can assure you that there will be more drama and humor to follow if you keep reading! (Also, more smut. Much more smut).


End file.
